Islams Reformers

al-Islâm Ibn Hajar al-Askalânî.” [1]
It would be extremely insolent, unfair and unreasonable to
suppose that the greatest scholars like al-Baidâwî, Imâm al-
Ghazâlî, Jalâl ad-dîn as-Suyûtî, Sadr ad-dîn al-Qonawî and
Sanâ’ullâh Pâniputî were too ignorant to distinguish a sahîh
hadîth from a made-up hadîth, or to suppose that they were as
irreligious as not to protect their religion or not to feel pangs of
conscience in recording made-up hadîths as sahîh hadîths. We
have told at length in the seventh and eighth paragraphs of our
book how strictly Islamic scholars studied hadîths. An intelligent
and reasonable person who reads those writings will certainly
realize that a religion reformer, who shows so much effrontery as
to say that there are concocted hadîths in the books written by
such a great scholar as Imâm al-Ghazâlî, would have deserved it if
his tongue were cut off or his books were burned to ashes. To say
that those exalted scholars could not understand the hadîths while
their successor Ibn Taimiyya could is a fallacy that would ill befit
anyone with the exception of the enemies of the Ahl as-Sunna
scholars. Those who cannot comprehend the greatness of Islamic
scholars suppose that those exalted leaders also wrote with their
short reasons and aberrant thoughts, like these people do. Their
sophistry stoops to such low levels as to say, “Al-Ghazâlî’s
discernment was obscured under the bad influence of social
ideas.” They cannot realize that each of his writings is an
explanation of âyats and hadîths. If a person who praises al-Imâm
ar-Rabbânî is sincere in his word and if he likes that exalted
leader’s writings, he should follow these writings and love the Ahl
as-Sunna scholars, whom al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî praises highly, and
he should not be disrespectful towards them. One should be a
scholar to appreciate the value of another scholar. Not to realize
the value of the Ahl as-Sunna scholars, or to strive to blemish and
criticize those blessed persons, causes one to depart from al-firqat
an-nâjiyya (the Group of Salvation), and he who departs from
Ahl as-Sunna becomes either a heretic or an unbeliever. [2] As it is
written on page 65 of the book Hidâyat al-muwaffiqîn by Abû
Muhammad Viltorî, one of the ’ulamâ’ of India, ’Allâma Ahmad
[1] Imâm Muhammad al-Birghiwî, Usûl al-hadîth, p. 91.
[2] Mawlânâ Hamd-Allah ad-Dajwî, al-Basâ’ir li-munkirî’t-tawassuli biahl
al-maqâbir, Pashawar, Pakistan, 1385, p. 52.
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